Various devices and techniques have been described to make dental flossings so convenient that this type of dental care would become a widespread, generally accepted practice. One technique involves producing small disposable inexpensive dental flossers that are made of plastic and have a small portion of dental floss imbedded at the ends of the arms attached to a tiny handle. U.S. Pat. No. 4,006,750 is exemplary of this type of flosser.
In another flosser, as described and shown in U.S. Pat. No. 1,815,408, a holder is formed of a handle and arms or tines that rigidly extend from the handle. The ends of the arms have small notches that are shaped to capture knots formed in a floss. The distance between the knots is slightly less than that between the notches in the arms so that the floss can be kept sufficiently taut to perform teeth cleaning. Knots on a short length of floss, however, are clumsy to manipulate and insert into the notches and are likely to slip out of the notch during use. In the U.S. Pat. No. 1,815,408 a small length of knotted floss is shown, and this tends to be particularly difficult to handle.
In U.S. Pat. No. 3,799,177 a dental flosser is shown wherein a dental floss is held taut between the ends of generally parallel arms by an adjustable pin placed between the arms. The arms are pivotally mounted at one end to a rocker that pivots about an axis. A lever actuates the rocker to cause the arms to move forward and backward in a generally parallel manner.
These dental flossers appear useful within their particular capabilities, but either are too complex or if simple in construction do not provide a satisfactory utility for teeth cleaning.